Abstract

Background

Hundreds of thousands of volunteers take part in medical research, but many will never
hear from researchers about what the study revealed. There is a growing demand for
the results of randomised trials to be fed back to research participants both for
ethical research practice and for ensuring their co-operation in a trial. This study
aims to determine participants' preferences for type of leaflet (short versus long)
used to summarise the findings of a randomised trial; and to test whether certain
characteristics explained participants' preferences.

Methods

553 participants in a randomised trial about General Practitioners' access to Magnetic
Resonance Imaging for patients presenting with suspected internal derangement of the
knee were asked in the final follow-up questionnaire whether they would like to be
fed back the results of the trial. Participants who agreed to this were included in
a postal questionnaire survey asking about their preference, if any, between a short
and a long leaflet and what it was about the leaflet that they preferred. Multinomial
logistic regression was used to test whether certain demographics of responding participants
along with treatment group explained whether a participant had a preference for type
of leaflet or no preference.

Results

Of the participants who returned the final follow-up questionnaire, 416 (88%) agreed
to receive the results of the trial. Subsequently 132 (32%) participants responded
to the survey. Most participants preferred the longer leaflet (55%) and the main reasons
for this were the use of technical information (94%) and diagrams (89%). There was
weak evidence to suggest that gender might explain whether participants have a preference
for type of leaflet or not (P = 0.084).

Conclusions

Trial participants want to receive feed back about the results and appear to prefer
a longer leaflet. Males and females might require information to be communicated to
them differently and should be the focus of further research.